A Thousand Ways To Die
By Miriam Rocke
When I was young, I always dreamed of death. It was a child's view of death-- clumsy, absurd, unrealistic, terrifying only in the way that a campfire ghost story was. I remember, once, dreaming that a vampire killed my father. The vampire was tall and impossibly thin and had glowing purple eyes and batlike wings and fangs that stuck out like buck teeth, and he killed my father by shaking hands, and then my father and the vampire played chess together. I had never seen a vampire, at that point, nor had I seen anyone die.
Then I became a Watcher, and didn't need dreams in order to see death. I had reality. And suddenly I couldn't laugh at the vampires, and no one played chess afterwards; and if I dreamed, it was just a replaying of what had been. Faces of friends and strangers, horrified, blood-spattered as often as not; screaming my name, or sometimes just screaming. As I became used to it, the dreams went away.
And then I met Buffy.
She was the Slayer, and I'd expected...I don't know. Something other than what she was. The Slayer was revered in my family, raised to almost mythical status. As a child, told stories of Slayers past, I had been fascinated by the strength and agility and powers which fate had granted to them. (I was never told how they died; I learned that later, reading the diaries of those Watchers who had seen their Slayers die.)
Buffy, though, wasn't a god, wasn't a hero. She was a frightened and stubborn girl, normal in any way she could be. She frustrated me, and she baffled me, and it wasn't long before she became as much my child as my Slayer.
Then, one night, she died.
He hadn't seen it coming. He couldn't have. There were no prophecies, no warning signals. She was patrolling alone, partly because he had become a bit too complacent, trusting as she did in her abilities. And so she died alone, and Giles found her body only after it was all over.
He hadn't even dreamed of this, because he hadn't thought it would happen. Slayers died, yes, but Buffy was too strong, too talented, too alive, to be killed. Numb, disbelieving, he knelt by her side, willing her to wake up. But she was too pale, and the blood on her throat around the twin holes was too dark. Giles had seen death before, enough that he could recognize it even when he didn't want to see it.
"Buffy," he whispered, touching her cold cheek with a shaking hand. She remained motionless, remained dead, and Giles cradled her body, unable to cry, unable to think.
The next morning, he went to school as always, only because the other option was to stay at home, miserable and alone, forced to examine and re-examine his failure as a Watcher. The library would remind him of her, but at least there were other things to distract him.
Things, he remembered a bit too late, like Willow.
"Hey," she said, a shy delighted smile on her face as she entered the library. "Got any more demons for me to look up on the net?"
Her voice was teasing, happy, innocent of what had happened; and Giles swallowed hard. He desperately didn't want to tell her, but he knew he had to. "Sit down."
Willow obeyed, the expression on her face melting to an earnest confusion. "What's wrong?"
What was the best way to say it? he wondered, feeling a bit detached from the situation. "I...Buffy's, um..."
He was interrupted by Buffy, skipping cheerfully in. "Hey, Giles!" she said, and then nearly skidded to a halt. "Oh, did I interrupt something?"
Giles stared at her, almost as numb as he had been the night before. He'd seen her, drained and dead. It was as real as this was-- more real, perhaps. Was he dreaming now, or hallucinating that which he wanted?
Buffy was frowning now. "Giles? You look like you've seen a ghost. What's up?"
"I. Um. That is..." He stammered to a halt, unable to think. She looked alive enough, and was behaving enough like Buffy, that she couldn't be dead. "Y-yes, well, I imagine I just haven't gotten enough sleep lately..."
"I guess." Buffy sounded dubious, not accepting that explanation much more than he did. "You sure you're okay? No end-of-the-world thingies I should be stopping?"
Giles tried to regain his composure. "No, nothing like that." Not precisely, he added silently. "Don't you two have classes to be going to?"
Buffy laughed. "All right, I get it. Giles is doing a personal wig session, and doesn't want us pesky teens around." She grinned at him. "C'mon, Will. Let's get to the hell that is English class."
"It's not hell," Willow protested automatically.
"It is if you listen to the teacher at all. Later, Giles!" She bounced out like a little blonde whirlwind, and Giles rubbed his head.
Buffy was alive, which would make last night's event, what-- a dream? It had been clear, real-feeling, more so than most of his dreams had been. The Watcher's histories told of the prophetic dreams which all Slayers had, and which some Slayers had in excessive clarity. They'd never spoken of a Watcher's dreams. Giles wasn't sure whether it had been just a projection of his fears, or whether it was something destined to come true.
He desperately hoped for the former. He could deal with his fears, but he would do anything to keep her alive.
The dream had her dying alone, unaccompanied on patrol. Clinging to the possibly naive belief that changing that one detail would keep it from coming true, Giles went with her on patrol that night. To her face he cited a need to examine her technique. It provided a convenient excuse to be there and to watch her closely.
Buffy staked several vampires with careless efficiency, and then came back to where he was. "So, how'd I do?" she asked, only barely winded.
"Hm?"
"Technique, Giles. That's why you're here, isn't it?"
"Oh. Yes. Right. Technique. Very good...the vampires are dead." And the Slayer's alive, he didn't add.
"Giles, are you sure you're okay? You're awfully distracted."
"Yes. I'm fine." He tried to put enough force behind the words that she would believe him. "It's getting late, though. I think that's enough patrol for tonight."
"One more circuit?" she begged, and pouted, half-teasing, when he shook his head. "I don't get you, you're always telling me to patrol, and then you say not patrol..."
"Patrolling is important, but if you do too much in one night, you might exhaust yourself."
"Wow. Moderation." She frowned at him, fully teasing now. "Okay, who are you and what have you done with the real Giles?"
"Buffy," he said a bit warningly, and she grinned, completely unrepentant.
"So, I'm off duty now?"
"Yes."
"Cool! And I bet there's still people at the Bronze."
"Buffy-- be careful. And don't walk home alone."
She rolled her eyes at him over her shoulder. "I'm a big girl, Giles. And the Slayer. I can take care of myself."
"I hope so," he whispered, knowing she wouldn't hear.
That night, she died again in his dreams. It was a simple, clean shot, a crossbow bolt through the heart. She didn't say a word-- didn't have a chance-- but her dead eyes stared reproachfully back at him. And Giles, still holding the now-empty crossbow, knew sickly that he deserved every bit of that reproach.
I didn't think, then, that I'd ever get used to the dreams, not entirely. I didn't think I could. Each night, I went to sleep with an expectant dread, and woke exhausted and shaking from the dream. And each night, the pain within the dream came fresh. I felt, sometimes, like Prometheus, healing during the day only to be torn apart again by a vulture at night. Only I wasn't quite sure what fire I'd stolen to deserve the punishment.
The dreams were all clear, seared into my brain as if the events within had actually happened. Once, she drowned; I didn't see it happen, but there was terror on her face. Once she was buried in a growing pile of dirt; I tried to dig it off of her, but by the time I succeeded, she had suffocated. Xander snapped her neck in the library when my back was turned, and afterwards he had the oddest smile on his face.
Vampires, often, were the result of her death-- one of them slit her throat with a knife, and lapped up the blood like a dog. Once, a vampire managed to twist her hand around and shove the stake through her heart. That vampire grinned at me and scurried away, and I awoke with the feel of Buffy's blood on my hands, the sound of her last breath rattling harshly in my ear.
Always a different way, always ending in death. I started to wish she would actually die, so that then it would be over and the dreams would stop; and then I despised myself for wishing that.
The real Buffy commented a couple times on my distraction. I couldn't tell her why, so I always made excuses.
When I saw the prophecy that she would die facing the Master, it came not with the shock it would have half a year earlier, but with a dull sort of deja-vu. I knew I needed to find some way around it, because I knew this time it was real; but every time I looked at her, I couldn't help but think of the dreams, couldn't help but see her face, pale in death so many times.
That summer, the dreams stopped. I didn't know if it was because she wasn't near, or if it was because I knew that death couldn't stop her. I didn't care; it was enough to be able to sleep through the night. But that meant that, the following autumn when she came back and it turned out that she wasn't as invulnerable as we'd thought, the dreams came back with a vengeance that caught me off guard.
So, feeling like a ten-year-old running to his father for help, I called an old friend of mine back in England.
"Dreams?" Richard Masterson asked. Even through the slightly fuzzy cross-Atlantic connection, Giles could hear the interest in his voice.
"Yes. Disturbing ones."
"Niiiice," he drawled, and then cleared his throat. "Not that I'm saying they're any fun, of course. But dreams are one of the most fascinating realms...every night, you said?"
"Pretty much. I don't remember any from over the summer, though."
"But they started when your Slayer came back?" Richard wasn't a Watcher as such, but he was a friend of the 'family', and knew about Slayers and Watchers and vampires.
"Within a day or two, yes. The first dream," he admitted sheepishly, "was perhaps a bit ludicrous. She was standing in the library, and a shelf full of books suddenly flew at her, hard enough to kill. No force behind them that I could tell, and no obvious poltergeist. But the dreams...I can't laugh about them. Last night, someone strangled her with her own scarf, and left her on her doorstep for her mother to find. Two nights ago, a witch-- I'm not sure who-- cast a spell that turned her blood to wine. And so on."
"Huh. And there isn't any pattern?"
"Not really, other than her death. And the fact that it hurts each time. Dammit, Richard, I thought that-- from what the Council always said, it sounded like having a Slayer was like having a really talented weapon. If it breaks, you just get another one and move on. But that's not the way it works! And I don't..." Giles stopped awkwardly as his voice broke.
"You don't want her to die?" Richard finished quietly. "I know. Or, at least, I gathered that. That's probably why you're having the dreams, Rupert. Your subconscious is augmenting your fear and turning it into something that feels real...and something that you are able, psychologically, to deal with, in a setting that isn't permanent. She can die, but the next morning she won't be dead."
Giles closed his eyes. It was a believable explanation, but there was a part of him that was, quite calmly, saying how wrong it was. "Maybe," he said, "but my instinct is that it's more..."
Richard was silent for a long time, and Giles started to grow worried. "If these dreams are prophetic, I need to know. I can't defend against something if I don't know that it needs defending against."
"There isn't any record of a Watcher having prophecy dreams." Richard was speaking slowly; his reluctance was clear. "But Pleis spoke of a thousand fires-- of a thousand days of torment for the one who holds the key. And Watchers have written of being disturbed in their sleep for...for years at a time, often."
A thousand days would be a bit under three years. Giles nodded wearily. "Does it say what happens after the thousand fires?"
"No. Rupert, this may not even apply to you."
"But it might," Giles said grimly. "Thank you..."
"Take care," Richard said.
Giles ran a hand through his hair. A thousand fires-- a thousand dreams-- a thousand ways for her to die. And at the end...
"At the end," he said aloud, grimly, "she will still be alive." They were, after all, only dreams.
Angel turned to Angelus, and the dreams got that much worse. She died in front of my eyes, many times-- though I couldn't ever stop it. A fire elemental, free and far too cranky, decided to vent its anger on her; she burned alive, writhing silently. Snakes dropped from the skies and swarmed over her; each individual bite might not have been fatal, but after a hundred, not even the Slayer could survive their poison. Once she was flayed alive; she staggered to on my doorstep, her flesh bloody and raw, her desperate eyes the only part of her that looked like Buffy. Someone that I think might have been Angelus caught her, tied her to my bed, and performed a careful vivisection that kept her alive until I'd returned. After that one, I burned my sheets, even though I knew it hadn't been real.
Some of the dreams I didn't even remember after waking; perhaps they were distressing enough that my mind blocked them. If they were that much worse, I'm glad I didn't remember them. But it wasn't that I didn't have the dreams, on those nights-- I woke up feeling the same, horror and guilt and pain and fear and dread all combining into one sickening ball in my stomach.
I still couldn't tell Buffy; at this point, there was the additional factor that she would blame herself for the dreams, as she blamed herself for Angel being Angelus. When she left for the summer, I worried for her, but hoped-- vainly, as it turned out-- that the dreams would lessen.
They didn't, of course.
Willow stopped by Giles' house, not for the first time that summer. He suspected, despite her protests, that she was doing it mainly to check on him.
"I just like your company," she said, trying to look innocent. "And since school's out, we don't use the library, so I go to your house."
"Indeed." Giles almost smiled. Willow didn't lie terribly well; she got jittery and her ears turned red.
"So...uh...How are you doing?" she asked, with an attempt at being casual. "I mean, with...with everything that's happened..."
"I'm surviving," he said quietly. "I..." He stopped, hesitated, then decided to tell her. "I've been having dreams. About Buffy."
Willow's eyes grew wide. "Like seeing where she is and stuff?"
"Not actually...they take place here, when I can identify the location. And I don't think the events I'm dreaming about are actually occurring." They couldn't be; no one, not even the Slayer, could die that many times.
"Oh. So it's not some sort of psychic Watcher-Slayer connection?" She sounded almost disappointed.
"I'm afraid not."
"'Cause that would have been cool. You could, like, keep an eye on her, even if it's not a literal eye..." Willow grew quiet. "She's gonna be okay, Giles. And she'll come back. She has to."
"Yes," Giles said, but it didn't seem to help. If he didn't know where to look for her, how would he know if she died? Would the dreams stop, or would they just keep going indefinitely? And, he wondered a bit morbidly, would his subconscious run out of ways she could die?
He realized with a start that Willow had said something, and made a noncommittal noise. She seemed to think that was an acceptable response, though her eyes were dark with worry.
"If I can do anything to help..." she offered, quietly. "Maybe a spell to ward off the dreams, or something?"
"The offer is appreciated, but I don't think that'll be necessary." Giles smiled as best he could.
That night, Willow, also, died in the dream. She was doing a spell on Buffy, as best Giles could figure; but the spell was too strong, and killed her midway through. The main force of the spell had been cast, but a few qualifying bindings had been left out; unchecked, the spell ripped Buffy's soul from her body, which collapsed in a glittering pile of dust.
The dreams kept coming, even after Buffy returned. A bottle of holy water broke in her pocket, and seared her flesh like that of a vampire; she died, quivering, with most of her gut eaten away. Several times, she became a vampire herself, and had to be killed; the worst of those was when she showed up after patrol, cheerfully oblivious to the demon she carried, and I had to stake her, and watch the confused betrayal linger in her eyes even as she turned to dust. The following night, the same thing happened, except that when I staked her, she died like a human.
I thought, perhaps, that I was going mad.
I'd forgotten, until much later, what Richard said, about the thousand days of fire. A thousand days is roughly two and three-quarters years. It can feel like a lifetime. It can also not be long enough. If I'd remembered, I would have worried as the end of the thousand days approached. If this was indeed what Pleis spoke of, the end of the thousand fires could have meant simply an end to dreams, or it could have meant that what they foretold would actually occur. I didn't think about it, and wouldn't have known. I still don't know. It could, after all, have just been coincidence...
It was, oddly for a Slayer, a death during daylight. She'd fought one of the demons that could walk in the light, and killed it; at which point, Willow babbled, too much in shock even to cry, the demon's mate had come. It killed her almost instantly with a blow to the head, and had then eaten the dead demon's body and left.
Giles didn't listen to most of the explanation. He knelt by Buffy's body, stroking her hair lightly, ignoring the bruising and the cuts from the Slayer's last fight. "I'm sorry," he said, taking her limp hand and squeezing it lightly. "I'm so very sorry..." It was something he'd said in countless other dreams, but it was still just as true.
"We ought to go," Willow said almost inaudibly. She sounded like she was starting to get over the shock.
Giles looked up at her. "Don't cry," he said, feeling numb. "It's just a dream. It'll be all right in the end."
Xander and Willow exchanged glances. Giles looked back down at Buffy's body, and reluctantly stood. "It's a dream," he said again.
"Come on, Giles." Willow took his arm and led him, stumbling, away.
It was a dream. Giles stopped trying to convince them of that-- since they were also creatures of the dream-- but he knew what it had to be, with the certain dull insistence of something that had happened too many times to count. It was a dream, and all he had to do was wake up. If he waited long enough, he would; and then he would be back in the real world, and Buffy would be there, ready to train.
He waited for the rest of his life, and never woke up.